Weaveworld

IV

THE NOMADS

1

he passage of winter was certainly weary for Cal, but for Suzanna it held perils far worse than boredom and bad dreams.

Those perils had begun the day after the night of the Fugue, when she and the Peverelli brothers had so narrowly escaped capture by Shadwell. Her life, and Jerichau’s, with whom she’d been re-united in the street beyond Shearman’s estate, had scarcely been out of danger since.

She had been warned of this at Capra’s House, and a good deal else beside. But of all she’d learned, the subject that had left the deepest impression was the Scourge. The Councillors had grown pale talking of how close to extinction the Families had come. And though the enemies now snapping at her heels – Shadwell and Hobart – were of a different order entirely, she could not help but believe they and the Scourge sprang from the same poisonous earth. They were all, in their way, enemies of life.

And they were equally relentless. Staying one step ahead of the Salesman and his new ally was exhausting. She and Jerichau had been granted a few hours’ grace on that first day, when a false trail laid by the brothers had successfully confused the hounds, but Hobart had picked up the scent again by noon. She’d had no choice but to leave the city that afternoon, in a second-hand car she’d bought to replace the police vehicle they’d stolen. Using her own car, she knew, would be like sending up smoke signals.

One fact surprised her: there was no sign, either on the day of re-weaving, or subsequently, of Immacolata. Was it possible that the Incantatrix and her sisters had elected to stay in the carpet; or even become trapped there against their will? Perhaps that was too much to hope for. Yet the menstruum – which she was increasingly able to control and use – never carried a tremor of Immacolata’s presence.

Jerichau kept a respectful distance in those early weeks; made uneasy, perhaps, by her preoccupation with the menstruum. He could be of no use in her learning process: the force she owned was a mystery to him; his maleness feared it. But by degrees she convinced him that neither it nor she (if they could be defined as separate entities) bore him the slightest ill-will, and he grew a little easier with her powers. She was even able to talk with him about how she’d first gained access to the menstruum, and how it had subsequently delved into Cal. She was grateful for the chance to talk about these events – they’d remained locked up in her for too long, fretted over. He had few answers for her, but the very telling seemed to heal her anxieties. And the less anxious she became, the more the menstruum showed its worth. It gave her a power that proved invaluable in those weeks: a premonitory skill that showed her ghost-forms of the future. She’d see Hobart’s face on the stairs outside the room where they were hiding, and know that he’d be standing in that very spot before too long. Sometimes she saw Shadwell too, but mostly it was Hobart, his eyes desperate, his thin mouth shaping her name. That was the signal to move on, of course, whatever the time of day or night. Pack up their bags, and the carpet, and go.

She had other talents too, all rooted in the menstruum. She could see the lights Jerichau had first shown her on Lord Street; and after a surprisingly short space they became quite unremarkable to her: merely another piece of information – like the expression on a face, or the tone of a voice – that she used to read a stranger’s temperament. And there was another visionary skill she now possessed, somewhere between the premonitions and the haloes: that is, she could see the consequence of natural processes. It wasn’t just the bud she saw, but the blossom it would become in spring, and if she stretched her sight a little further, the fruit that would come after it. This grasp of potential had several consequences. For one, she gave up eating eggs. For another, she found herself fighting off a beguiling fatalism, which, if she hadn’t resisted it, might have left her adrift in a sea of inevitabilities, going whatever way the future chose to take her.

It was Jerichau who helped save her from this dangerous tide, with his boundless enthusiasm for being and doing. Though the blossom, and the withering of the blossom, were inevitable, Human and Seerkind had choices to make before death: roads to travel, roads to ignore.

One of those choices was whether to stay companions or become lovers. They chose to be lovers, though it happened so naturally Suzanna could not pinpoint the moment of decision. Certainly they never talked explicitly about it; though perhaps it had been in the air since the conversation in the field outside Capra’s House. It just seemed right that they take that comfort from each other. He was a sophisticated bed-partner, responsive to subtle changes in mood; capable of raucous laughter one moment and great gravity the next.

He was also, much to her delight, a brilliant thief. Despite the vicissitudes of life on the run, they ate (and travelled) like royalty, simply because he was so light-fingered. She wasn’t certain how he managed to be so successful – whether it was some subtle rapture he employed to divert a watcher’s eye, or whether he was simply born a thief. Whatever his method, he could steal anything, large or small, and scarcely a day went by without their tasting some expensive delicacy, or indulging his new-found passion for champagne.

It made the chase easier in more practical ways too, for they were able to change cars as often as they liked, leaving a trail of abandoned vehicles along the route.

That route took them in no particular direction; they simply drove where their instincts suggested. Intentionality, Jerichau had said, was the easiest way to get caught. I never intend to steal, he explained to Suzanna one day as they drove, not until I’ve done it; so nobody ever knows what I’m up to, because I don’t either. She liked this philosophy; it appealed to her sense of humour. If she ever got back to London – to her clay and her kiln – she would see if the notion made aesthetic as well as criminal sense. Maybe letting go was the only true control. What kind of pots would she make if she didn’t try to think about it?

The trick, however, didn’t dislodge their pursuers, merely kept them at a distance. And on more than one occasion that distance narrowed uncomfortably.